The Caffeinated Lifestyle
by Laiqualaurelote
Summary: Otto and Maladicta. Coffee girl and camera guy. Perfect pairing, I think. A series of seven snapshots of their brief life together.
1. The Temperance Tea

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

Author's Note: I wonder if this is the first OttoMaladicta fic in the fandom. If it's not, I do apologise, but I did think of the pairing all by myself, and I'm so proud. They have about two scenes together, but the _chemistry is so strong!_ Both Black Ribboners, both cool...and Monstrous Regiment needs more het as it is, it's drowning in femmeslash. Not that they can help it, viewing the book's sex ratio.

I attempt to be drabbley, but only succeed in being concise, I suppose.

**The Temperance Tea**

Otto Chriek met Corporal Maladict again during the social tea of the Temperance Mission. The League was very into tea, and teas, in general, and since the event took place when the Borogravian regiment was passing through Ankh-Morpork, Maladict had dropped in.

The tea room was dark, because not all the newbies had gotten used to bright lights yet, and filled with figures in dark evening suits and swishy capes. The atmosphere was trying to be cosy, while steadily drowning in Gothic.

They were sitting at a table for two in the corner. Otto usually didn't join the larger cliques, and Maladict was new. Or more like, from the Borogravian Exchange Program.

It had been nearly a year since they had last met. Some things had changed. For one, it was now Sergeant Maladict.

The other thing was even more unexpected.

Otto nearly spat a mouthful of tea across the room. "You _vhat_?"

"I never did tell anyone outside the regiment, did I?" admitted Maladict – Maladict_a_ ruefully. "Somehow I didn't want to bother."

Otto's hand scrabbled for a napkin. "But…but I alvays thought you vere ze only male in that bunch! Villiam thought so too. Oh, dear."

"Well, now you know, Borogravia's run _entirely _by women now." Maladicta stirred her tea morosely. "I say, haven't they got coffee here?"

"Er, not in the Ankh-Morpork branch," muttered Otto distractedly. "Vell, you could at least have told _me_."

Maladicta sighed. "Don't tell your writer friend, all right? I could do with a little less publicity – and anyway, that war is old news." She sighed, and added plaintively, "They could at least supply _caffeine_."

"Tea's got caffeine in it," observed Otto.

"I don't like tea," replied Maladicta shortly. She stood up, leaving the still-full teacup steaming. "Well, it's been nice catching up, but I really must get back to the barracks now. There's coffee there, for one."

She was pushing her way through the black-clad crowd, her uniform glinting in the midst of the evening capes. Otto stirred distractedly at his tea for a while, before suddenly coming back to his senses, leaping up, and dashing after her.

He caught up with her at the entrance, gasping. "Vait!"

Maladicta turned around slowly, her level gaze amused.

"Vell," went on Otto, feeling slightly disturbed, "I vas only vundering……vhen is your regiment leaving Ankh-Morpork?"

Maladicta shrugged. "Our Captain is in negotiation with Commander Vimes on our plans. I'm not sure. I'm only a sergeant, remember?" She narrowed her eyes. "What's it to you?"

"I vas…" Otto tugged at his collar, and burst out, "Are you free for dinner tonight?"

Maladicta smiled. The blazing sunlight of a Morporkian afternoon glinted on her canines. "We eat in the barracks."

Maladicta, Otto noted, was a woman who appreciated a challenge. She would only consider him if he took the challenge she threw at him. "Breakfast, tomorrow?" went on Otto desperately.

"Going out with Polly," said Maladicta airily.

"Lunch, then?"

Maladicta appeared to consider it. "Oh, very well. I'm free for tea." She turned to stride down the street.

_Thank you_, thought Otto, _thank you thank you_……

Maladicta paused, and turned back. "But only if the place had coffee!" she yelled, and was gone in the crowd.


	2. Linguistics

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

Author's Note:

**2. Linguistics**

"Repeat after me: _Which witch washed _the _wildflower wallpapered window _last _Wednesday_?"

"Vhich – vitch – vashed…"

"No, _no_. Look, you do it like this, you purse your lips and go 'wer'."

"_Ver_."

"No! Oh dear, we're never going to get this right."

"I really don't zink it's very fair. How come you can say it and I cannot?"

"Simple. I've got a Borogravian accent, you've got an Ubervaldean one. Uber_wald_ean. You know what? It's catching, your accent."

"Really? So I should go sit at another table?"

"_No_, not that. Let's try again, shall we? _Why _does _William_ _wear white wellingtons when wet_?"

"Vhy does Villiam…"

"Oh, forget it." A pause. "Actually, I think you should keep the accent."

"Really? Vhy?"

"Because…" Maladicta paused for maximum effect: "Vell, I vas zinkink, it's actually razzer cute."

Otto glared at her over the rim of her raised coffee cup. "You are overdoink it, you know."


	3. Klatchian is the New Black

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

Author's Note:

**3. Klatchian is the New Black**

Window-shopping was quite a popular sport in Ankh-Morpork. The only shops with windows worth staring at were the really high-end ones, and if you weren't Thieves Guild there was no way you could rob one without getting strung upside down outside the Guild by your toenails. The poor, of which there were many, had to be satisfied with staring at the displays.

Vampires had an advantage, because when they looked into the glass, there was no reflection to block their view.

Maladicta sipped Klatchian Black out of one of her portable coffee cups that she was forever carrying around, and squinted up at this particular display.

"It's quite nice," said Otto carefully. He had the feeling it was expected of him.

Maladicta made an elegant noise of scorn and turned away. "Velvet," she muttered disdainfully. "Velvet! And ruched too. With _lace at the sleeves, _oh, _lace_, oh yes. And look at those skirts – I bet they're underwired. And the corset. Ye gods, am I glad I don't wear those things anymore."

Otto stared at her in some confusion.

"I thought vimmin _liked _dresses?" he ventured.

"Shows how little you know," said Maladicta sniffily.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she added hurriedly, on viewing his hurt expression. "It's really a love-hate relationship. I spent a hundred-something years trapped in corsets and under-wired nightdresses. Well, I liked it at first, all vampire girls go through that stage, but after some time – well, I had enough. When I touch black velvet now, I get rashes."

Otto assimilated this. "You still have not said vhere ze part about love comes in," he pointed out.

Maladicta sighed. "In a way, you were right. When I see one I can't tear my eyes away. It's some sort of horrible fascination." She cast one last glance of mixed emotions at the black velvet gown, and then moved on. Otto trotted after her. "Think of it as blood," she was saying. "We're sworn off it, right? But still it draws us."

"It's a lot easier, vhen you put it zat vay."

Otto mused on this as they strolled back up the street. His ideal of a dream girl had always been a tall Gothic beauty who nearly always wore black lace basques and satin gloves. Maladicta was short, wore her hair in a rakish ponytail down her back, and had never been seen to dress in anything apart from her regimental uniform. She was definitely not pretty. 'Debonair' might hit closer to the point.

They looked like two young men, one in black and the other in red and white, strolling up the street together.

Ah, well, ideals change, thought Otto.

"Do you ever miss being a girl?" he inquired.

Maladicta gave the question due consideration. "Sometimes. But not really. Besides," she added, pausing for a long sip, "I have coffee now."


	4. A Question of Style

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

**4. A Question of Style**

Define 'cool'.

She had always been the cooler one – if you define cool as suavity, grace, looking good in whatever you wore because you made people think so. She could draw people's gazes by blowing a smoke ring. She could annoy people with one smirk. Polly had been famously susceptible to that particular trick.

But he had an air about him that made people want to laugh. He was _likable_.

She rather envied that, in a way.

When he was capering around his cellar juggling chemicals, or trying to teach her the more light-hearted Temperance hymns, or hopping on one foot in his best imitation of an 'Ankh-Morporkian pugilist', she'd start to smile. And then he'd look over his shoulder, a glint of teeth an invitation to join his mad little world, and she'd burst out laughing, and accept.

He made her laugh. And that, thought Maladicta, as she watched Otto dance around the iconograph with the screwdriverand singing 'Valking in Sunshine', while inhaling the heady scent from her coffee cup, was what really counted. Style could go stake.


	5. Flash

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

**5. Flash**

"Vell, vell…move a little bit to zat side, vill you?……aha, I think I've got it."

"Pardon me for saying this, but I don't think this is a very good id – "

"AAARGH! Oh damndamndamn……"

Maladicta sighed, sidestepped the smoking iconograph, scooped up a small glass vial of blood from the pile on the side-table, crawled under the table till she was kneeling next to the smoking remains of Otto Chriek and smashed the glass.

Otto bloomed happily out of the cone of ash, struck his head on the underside of the table and collapsed again.

"It reflected, didn't it?" said a voice from ground level. "I had a notion it vas going to do zat. Vell, then it must vork the other vay."

"Are you sure? This is the seventeenth time you've killed yourself over photography."

"Von't hurt. Oh, I know, I only need to adjust the sodium sulphate flash content!" Otto sprang back up, met the table with a crack, and fell once more, entangling Maladicta on the way. They lay in a tangle upon the glassy fragments and stared at the wooden underside of the table.

"I think," decided Maladicta, "that it will take a lot more than sodium sulphate."

Five minutes later……

"Good, ze lightink is good now…you ready? Say chiz!"

The iconograph flashed brilliantly.

This time, they both turned into ash.


	6. The Dark Room

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

**6. The Dark Room**

The most sensitive part of a vampire is the neck. After all, they've bitten enough necks to feel rather protective about their own.

So she shivered when she felt him touch the sensitive skin of her throat, brush her jugular with concealed fangs, kiss her on the nape of the neck. And she thought about the words that had broke the world.

"The regiment's going back to Borogravia. I'm leaving tomorrow morning."

The dark room, the cellar, was their secret hollow, the clandestine heart of their time together. There was dark, and there was light. Here the iconographs dried like newborns fresh from birthing, to grow cool and smooth and glossy in the dim, still air. The dark room kept their words, frozen like iconographs, buried in the nooks and crannies of the old stone.

They stood still, holding hands, and savoured the passage of time through the darkness.

Later, when she was gone, Otto went out and bought a cup of coffee from the Klatchian stall round the corner. He took it down to the dark room, and sat there with his head in his hands and his nose just above the rim of the cup. The bittersweet caffeinated aroma of the coffee reminded him of Maladicta.

Nearing the evening, the trapdoor opened, silhouetting Sacharissa. "Er, Otto? William and I are going out for dinner……you don't want to join us? Oh. Okay."

The trapdoor shut.

Otto stayed in the same position for the rest of the night, until the coffee turned stone cold and he fell asleep.


	7. Aftertaste

**The Caffeinated Lifestyle**

**7. Aftertaste**

When they stopped to bivouack in the mountains, Maladicta took the iconograph out of her pack and examined it again by the light of the campfire.

It was black-and-white. The colour experiment had turned out terrible, but Otto had kept it nevertheless.

"Who's that?" asked Polly from the other side of the campfire.

"Me," said Maladicta, and put it away.

It was meant to end. They had each their own callings: she followed the war, he followed the news. And they might meet again, when war made news, but then?

She'd have liked to hear him laugh again.

As the camp went to bed around her, she nursed a cup of strong coffee and watched the moon ride high in the sky. She shut her eyes and tried to remember feelings, sense of touch, but all she could pick up was the bittersweet aftertaste.


End file.
